The Century: 100-81 countdown featuring Virgil van Dijk, Carlos Tevez, Robin Van Persie and more

The Century: This week, The Independent is counting down the 100 best players of the last twenty years

Today at The Independent we begin our countdown of the 100 greatest players of the 21^st century.

We asked ten of our football writers to identify the 50 greatest players of the past two decades, with each player assigned a number of points determined by their rank, before an overall list was then worked out.

In voting for the greatest players of the 21^st century, our team of ten considered a few broad factors: a player’s ability and the actual application of that ability; the consistency of that application; the level they reached; their influence on the competition and – of course – their level of achievement.

Here is our Chief Football Writer Miguel Delaney explaining exactly what we were looking for and how the process works.

Each day this week at 9am we will be revealing twenty players, with the winner finally crowned on Friday.

Check the above gallery to see the first twenty players in our Century countdown.

The first part of our countdown features a number of World Cup, Super Cup and Champions League winners, highlighting just what a difficult task it was to rank the 100 players in question. Let us know what you think of our choices in the comments section below, or on social media.

The Century

This week, we are counting down the 100 greatest players of the 21st century, revealing 20 per day until the winner is announced on Friday.

We asked 10 of our football writers to select 50 players, with each pick awarded points contributing to a final score.

Join us throughout the week for a wide selection of exclusive interviews and features, as we celebrate the best players of the last twenty years.